A
street-smart Czech and a film-crazed Russian, the master criminals
of 15 Minutes, land at JFK airport with barely
a penny in their pockets, hungry to collect a payoff from
a crime committed in Eastern Europe. Emil Slovak (played by
Karel Roden), nevertheless, has a game plan--commit wild crimes,
get a million dollars in the process, plead guilty by reason
of insanity, go to a mental institution, become cured (because
he was never crazy), and then get released in the promised
land with a million-dollar book and film contract about the
killing streets (of Manhattan). Oleg Razgul (played by Oleg
Taktarov), rather than playing the role of Cyneas (from Plutarch’s
Lives ) to this absurd scenario, wants to film the entire
story in order to propel himself to a lucrative job as a Hollywood
film producer. Nobody informs the Russian that he will be
jailed, too, and at best would become a cinematographer. As
usual, master criminals call for master cops. Accordingly,
NYPD’s Eddie Fleming (played by Robert De Niro) and arson
investigator Jordy Warsaw (played by Edward Burns) try to
track them down but remain a few steps behind until the end
of the film. Fleming is a highly decorated cop, well known
to television audiences, thanks to his girlfriend Nicolette
Karas (played by Melina Kanakaredes), who is a TV news reporter.
At one point he interviews a young Czech woman (played by
Vera Farmiga), an illegal alien, to get information about
the criminals, but her reward is to be reported to INS and
deported without due process, a fate not in store for the
two master criminals later in the film. Amid the fast-moving
episodes of crime and pursuit, writer-director John Herzfeld
places several more implausible thoughts into the mouths of
his cast. First of all, the master criminals believe that
the criminal justice system is a sham, with nobody held accountable
for their crimes, though they do not realize that insanity
pleas are accepted only 1 percent of the time, and that release
from a psychiatric hospital is not so easy. Secondly, they
characterize Americans as weak because they watch "crybaby"
shows, not realizing that hardworking people do not have time
to watch soaps and talk shows. But thirdly, most importantly,
media exploit crime for ratings, create a culture of universal
victimization, encourage some Americans to get 15 minutes
of Warholian fame on TV through televised crime, and actually
hinder the criminal justice system. The films taglines are
"America likes to watch. . . . The killings won't stop until
you stop watching. . . . Why are you still watching?" But
the third point, which deserves serious attention, is lost
in the cacophony of characters who talk, sometimes all at
once, but rarely listen, leaving 15 Minutes’s
filmviewers precisely in the role of TV couch potatoes --
massaged by violence instead of the message about violence.
MH
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